Essential Native Trees and Shrubs for the Eastern United States: The Guide to Creating a Sustainable Landscape

Love the photo identification

The past several years, I’ve been transforming my yard to native plants. Removing non native. I wish I was given this book years ago. Great detail, great photos. Love how it give guidance on what plants match best , companion plants. great gift for the gardener in your life.

As a person who has worked in environmental sciences and landscaping for decades, as well as being a master watershed steward, I think this book will be extremely valuable to both the layperson looking to plant natives as well as landscape professionals who need an easy-to-use guide at their side. After a brief intro explaining why native plants are critical to healthy landscapes, including our endangered insect populations that rely on these plants, the book contains an in-depth section on how to use its contents most effectively This is not a book that you sit down and read...it's a reference volume that will help decipher which plants are best used in which situations.Unlike any other plant books that I've seen, this one contains a handy chart with different landscape, planting area or vegetation characteristics, such as areas subject to drought, street planters, plants with winter interest or those tolerant of shade. There are numerous categories so that it's easy to assess the characteristics of the area you want to plant and match them with the appropriate trees and shrubs that will thrive there. Additionally, each tree or shrub has a couple of pages of description, photos, unique characteristics, habit, seasons of interest and a diagrammatic chart that shows its growth rate and its relative size (with a human figure for scale).I highly recommend this book to those interested in making their yards (and others' yards) in harmony with the climate, topography, moisture and landscape of the Eastern seaboard through the planting of vegetation that evolved in this area. Bringing back these plants will, in turn, bring back the insect populations, followed by songbirds, small animals, and ultimately other animals higher up in the food web. It's about time that we turn our grassy expanses of lawn into habitat, so that we see a return of nature to our yards.

I love this book! I'm teaching a class on how to incorporate native plants in yards to increase habitat for wildlife. This book will be such a helpful resource. It's cool how the front of the book lists species that are resistant to various issues like deer, disease, drought, etc. I also love all the good information about each plant and the size illustrations are really helpful. The photos are great too! The plants are listed alphabetically by scientific name, which is cool because common names vary so much, but it may be harder to look up a plant if you don't know it's scientific name.

As Library Coordinator for our chapter of the national organization of "Wild Ones: native plants, natural landscapes", it is my responsibility to stay up to date with the latest books on native plants and current environmental conservation thought. I introduced this book last night at our February monthly meeting and it was immediately checked out. I particularly like the pictures of each tree or shrub as a mature specimen as well as the drawings of comparable sizes of youth versus mature specimen. This very readable book gives information on ATTRIBUTES/USE IN LANDSCAPE, SEASONS OF INTEREST, FORM, COLOR, TEXTURE, CULTURE, COMPANION PLANTS, and SUPPORTED WILDLIFE for each tree or shrub. It tells where each tree/shrub is native but also, unfortunately, gives a preferred USDA zones which supports growing the specimen outside its native area. It also supports cultivars which is not in the best interests of nature. In general, however, this is a very valuable book to have in your personal library if used properly.

Full of very useful information and photos, e.g. if the deer will decimate your shrub.

Excellent book with beautiful photographs of trees for creating a sustainable eastern landscape

I got this book from the library and liked it a lot. I started making copious notes, then decided I really needed my own copy. My only complaint is that they have relegated some of my favorite trees and shrubs to 'secondary' status--defined as having problems that outweigh their positive characteristics, and hence give very little information on them. I would have preferred a bigger book with more information on more plants! More like a Dirr's Manual of Woody Landscape Plants--but natives only--but that would have been a different book! I'm also disappointed that they included so few cultivars of each plant--for example, they list 3 cultivars of river birch, Dirr lists 12. However, Dove & Woolridge give good information on soils tolerated, pH, ornamental characteristics, and wildlife value--an important issue and a major reason for choosing native plants!